When one of the latest recruits to the Australia team admits that his
cricketing high point was fielding as twelfth man at Grace Road,
Leicestershire, you might be forgiven for thinking that the game is up. That
the fears expressed by many during England’s rampant tour to Australia last
winter of declining interest in the sport there generally and, worse, that a
collective amnesia of time-honoured principles of excellence had taken root.

But that recruit, Pat Howard, is not a player, rather a manager and he
represents just one of a number of new fibres that makes up the broom